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Originally Posted by sgtdmski  If you are sick and show up at an Emergency Room you are treated, right then and right there, granted you may have to wait up to 8 hours, but there is not week or two waiting. NICE TRY BUT IT IS A LIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
dmk | I dunno what it is you claim i have stated that is a LIE, but i agree with what you are saying. I know that nobody gets turned away from the emergency room when it is an emergency. But the point is that many costly EMERGENCY PROCEDURES could be prevented if people had free access to PREVENTATIVE medical treatment. Maybe i'm wrong but my understanding has always been that emergencies get treated, but not before they are emergencies. Prevention works better than curing. YOu get my point? Quote:
Originally Posted by sgtdmski Universal Healthcare will cost the system more. If you have a sore throat or a cold, instead of going to the Grocery Store or Walmart and buying cold medicine, you go to the hospital. Instead of something that should cost $5 - $10 to treat, instead you pay for the doctor, the nurse, the lab, the x-ray, the electicity, the telephone, the heat/air, and finally the medicine. Now the bill is something like $2500. The costs will skyrocket.
dmk | Well, once again the issue here is the practical application of a principle. It MUST be possible to work the system such that curing a cold DOESN'T wind up costing the state $2500. I mean the fact is the ( yes i know its on a smaller scale) denmark CAN pay for the treatment of its sick people, without incurring unreasonable losses. To assume that it is not possible is to assume that government administration is by its very nature incompetent. And while i agree some government administration IS incompetent, it is not a universally defining quality of government involvement. Quote:
Originally Posted by sgtdmski Once upon a time we made it a requirement for people to have car insurance in order for them to drive, instead of costs going out of control they stabilized. If we can make car insurance mandatory, why not health insurance? If we did, then this whole debate would end.
dmk | I think that would be much the same as public healthcare. You know why? because if you make it MANDATORY to have health insurance, as a government you must also ensure that your population can AFFORD the insurance ( car insurance is only applicable when you have a car, which many people don't, but EVERYBODY has a HEALTH to care for ).
Anyhow in this process of mandatory health insurance, steps need to be taken like increasing minimum wages, subsidizing families with more children, and other social welfare programs, so the government is gonna HAVE to spend no matter what. I personally believe that this will wind up costing the government MORE since insurance companies have to make a profit. That means that the savings a government can make by having a healthy population instead goes to private business. ( X is healthy, but he keeps paying insurance premium even though he is fine, and the government needs to keep ensuring that he can keep paying the premium. In a free healthcare society, if X is healthy, the government simply saves that money that would have gone to insurance under your proposal) Love for all, Hatred for none |